MAY IS LOOKING UP

Treasure Seeker,  former C. G. Richter, recently
photographed moored in St. Marten harbor.

Detroit Harbor, Washington Island -

Our foreign correspondent and his wife were recently vacationing on St. Marten Island, where he took this picture of the Treasure Seeker.   Other than her hull still floating, there wasn't much to indicate she ever left the mooring in Philipsburg Harbor.   Locals said the Treasure Seeker had been stationed there since some time in November.  "Maybe awaiting a gold shipment from South America to Europe" was how our correspondent interpreted the situation.

We can imagine the salt air and salt water are by now taking their toll on the old girl.  Keeping up with pockets of rust had become a standard spring activity during the last years here, in fresh water, even long after the last trips as a ferry.  Time and the elements are not kind to vessels, despite lack of daily service.

Water levels continue to rise

Our Lake Michigan water levels are up nicely over last spring, and a rather wet week with strong easterly winds knocked out the last of the bay and harbor ice in addition to contributing moisture to the lake.

According to the Army Corps, Lakes Michigan and Huron are now about 11 inches above last year's level, with another expected rise of at least five inches over the next month.

With the harbor ice gone and danger of ice en route being eliminated, the ferry Robert Noble made its first trip of the season May 1.  The Arni J. Richter, which began winter service back on December 10, 2013, was sidelined for cleaning and routine maintenance, some of it deferred during that period due to the daily need for availability during the period of ice.   With so much ice in the bay this winter, and the potential for problems during breakup, this year's process nevertheless went quite smoothly, with only one day's interference during a heavy snowstorm three weeks back when a large field came against Plum Island.  From then it was smooth sailing, and the bay ice melted, more or less, in place.

Saturday, May 3, the ferry schedule bumped up to 11 daily round trips, one per hour through the heart of each day.   We hope adequate traffic will soon follow.

Dredging progress

Since resuming the Detroit Harbor channel dredging project in April, the Roen crew has made good progress, edging the 80% mark by last week's end.  The rig with backhoe and crane moved into the middle section of the channel, as the WDNR requires with three designated "fish windows."  Foth Project Manager Ken Aukerman now believes they are on track to complete this project by the middle of June.  This is good news for everyone, in that the trucking and the resulting mess on the roads will settle down in time for the start of the heaviest tourism season.

Dredging in fog April 30.

The Town's gravel pit, the receptacle for the dredge spoils, is fast filling up.  Much of the material in the past weeks has been exceptionally sloppy and mucky - easy to dig and transfer, but not particularly easy to truck, or to contain on site.   This, too, should change as the rig works its way further out the channel, where higher stone content has in the past been found.

This has been a big project, and while it stirred up commotion in terms of truck traffic, road damage and so forth, none of that comes as unexpected.  One positive is that, perhaps in late August, brand new asphalt paving is expected for those trucking roads, in addition to other roads the Town of Washington and Door County designate for paving.   Six months from now, we should see many, excellent miles of newly paved roads.

Currently, with temperatures pushing to edge above the 50 degree mark (it was 33 degrees yesterday morning), it's hard to believe that Cherry Train tours begin in two weeks, and that we'll entertain Memorial Day guests with an Island that is now only partially awake from a long winter.

-   Dick Purinton

LAKE LEVELS

Scene at Kap's Marina Friday, Oct. 12.

Detroit Harbor, Washington Island -

The Army Corps of Engineers report from the internet (which they update weekly due to general interest) shows that we are "zero" difference from the all-time recorded low water of 1964.   In other words, we're at the bottom of the recorded lake level curve, a statistic that took almost another fifty years to reach once again.

I stated in yesterday's blog that we had dropped approximately 8 inches in the several weeks I was away, and I believe that to be true, although it was based on casual observation rather than accurate readings from known benchmarks.   According to Hoyt, who used a line painted on sheet piling, the loss since September 1 has been 16 inches.   During northerly winds, which we have had of late, the levels drop more noticeably, what might be referred to as a "basin effect," where pressure of wind forces water from bays and shallows in the direction of the wind's flow (lower Michigan).

This fluctuation is serious for us, but it is all relative, of course.   If we lived where there were daily tidal movements of several feet, we would be equipped to deal with such phenomena, or would locate essential water services where there was less chance of being adversely influenced by the tides.  (Floating stages for loading are common on rivers and coasts, especially for boarding passengers;  more elaborate, longer sections of ramps are used for boarding vehicles.)

At the dinner table on our trip we visited with a man from a large inland lake in Texas, an area hit hard by drought of the last year, where cattle have been shipped to northern feedlots due to lack of hay, and where his lakefront has seen an 80-foot drop.   He laughed when we said we had experienced a drop of several feet in recent years, and that the historic fluctuation between high and low was in the range of six feet of lake level.

Hard to get sympathy and understanding with those figures, and we didn't even try.

Access to the marina's slips and launching ramp may be for
canoes only, given reduced depths.

But the real difference, I think, is that he could still exit his front door, on the highway side of his house, and drive to work with no real impact from his dried up lake frontage.   Here, that's not an option.

And, there is the matter of our getting used to a routine, one that was based on stable lake levels, where use of harbors and other natural shoreline features led to the development of both shoreline and upland properties.  There is no law that says today's level couldn't be the new normal lake level, but we happen to have faith that precipitation will sooner or later cause a net gain in lake storage over the next few years as has happened in the past.

The immediate future, though, will cause us to examine how we operate ferries, and what contingencies we will adopt during the interim.

-  Dick Purinton